Truth or Dare?
Edited by Max Booth III
Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing
October 30, 2014
Reviewed by Tim Potter
Truth or Dare? is a solid anthology from editor Max Booth II and Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing. It’s a shared world collection centering on a situation rife with storytelling opportunities: a drunken high school game of “Truth or Dare” in a dark Ohio forest on a Halloween full moon night. The stories are all firmly grounded in horror, but explore a wide variety of subgenres and situations.
Richard Thomas kicks things off with his short entry “Shackled to the Shadows.” It’s a nice, if lean, story that establishes the setting and concept of the anthology more than anything else. “The Unpleasant Truth About Death” by Eric J. Guignard follows and is an interesting tale about an ill-fated childhood game of Dead Man’s Reflection, probably better known in the Bloody Mary incarnation. The character in this story chooses “truth” and must share how he died, exactly three years prior, when playing the ominous game. The creature feature “Mantid” by Kenneth W. Cain is a traditional but very effective entry that finds a character on a dare attacked by tiny river monsters. Jessica McHugh’s “A Ribbon, A Rover” is a unique and creepy tale of a girl, new to the group of friends, who keeps her secrets tied up with a ribbon around her neck. “Iz” brings some real claustrophobia to the book with a story of a dare that takes the title character into an abandoned church, from author Eli Wilde.
Usman T. Malik’s story “Laal Andhi” is a fascinating story, lyrical and mythical in its prose, about life far away from Ohio. It is about life in a land of violent and mysterious deaths overtaken by the wars of outsiders. As strong as the story is, it and the collection suffer from the fact that it feels very much like a square peg that’s been pounded into a round hole. It just doesn’t fit well with the shared world as well as the other stories.
“The Pole” by William Meikle is interesting, told in the first person, as though the storyteller is presenting his story to the group around the campfire directly. Jay Wilburn presents “Lucy’s Arrow” which is a guilty pleasure, highlighted by an act of cathartic violence taken out against a sexual predator. “Change” by Peter and Shannon Giglio is a short and strong story. Its roots are firmly in classic horror and the story reads like a sort of mash-up of Vincent Price’s The Fly and The Incredible Shrinking Man.
“The Bone Witch” by Chantal Noordeloos is decent if uninspiring tale of a high school outsider and a local “witch.” Other average, if forgettable stories include “Marco Polo” by James Chambers, “The White Sepulchre” by Nik Korpon, Sanford Annel’s “Rattlebone Express,” “The Shadow Life of Suburbia” from T. Fox Dunham and “The Other Bonfire” by Jeremy C. Shipp.
The strongest story in the collection is Vincenzo Bilof’s “The Dog Metaphor.” It’s the story of a class clown, a boy only noticed when the other students are in need of a laugh, and then so used, is promptly forgotten again. He is compelled by the game to tell the truth and tell the rest of the students why he is who he is. What results is a story about the nature of storytelling, an almost postmodern meditation of the nature of creating the tales we tell. The prose is also stunning and original and every word seems like it was slaved over to make sure it was perfect. This is Bilof’s first published story and it prompted me to immediately pick-up his debut novel, Vampire Strippers From Saturn.
Bestselling author Joe McKinney closes the book out with a story that both ties-up the shared world aspect for the anthology and works on its own as a solid tale that ends in an unexpected classic monster twist. Truth or Dare? works because most of the stories are quite good and almost all of the stories work well as part of the same world. It’s a bit uneven, as virtually all collections are, but the highlights make this a strong selection for a horror anthology.
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